Sam Fender has issued an apology after sharing a photo of himself with Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck with the words “serious heroes.” Fender posted the now-deleted photo on the same night as the verdict was reached in Depp’s defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard. Depp was not in Fairfax County for the verdict, as he has been playing with Beck all week.

“I want to apologise,” Fender wrote on his Instagram Story. “I was invited to briefly meet a musical legend and an actor who has been in almost every film I’ve watched growing up. I went – we chatted music and without thinking I took a photo and posted it as it was pretty surreal.”

Fender added that he’d called Depp and Beck “heroes” “in reference to their careers” while acknowledging that “in the context of the trial [it] was severely misinformed… I now realise that it was a poor choice of words and timing, but that’s irrelevant… It was naive and disrespectful to those who relate to any of the issues highlighted in the trial and the broader issues it poses. I didn’t think it through and I should have.”

Fender finished, “I can’t really say anything other than it was ill-judged and I was ignorant with regards to the trials as a whole, and thoughtless on what my post could imply. I realise this entirely, and for that I’m deeply sorry.”

After a long media-circus trial, a Virginia jury found that Heard had defamed her ex-husband Johnny Depp by identifying herself as “representing domestic abuse” in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed. In a decision that many commentators have called a backlash against the #MeToo movement, the jury ordered Heard to pay Depp $15 million; she plans to appeal.